


flames, they licked the walls (tenderly they turned to dust, all that i adored)

by voxofthevoid



Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [4]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Captor Bonding, Cock Slapping, Dry Sex, Dubious Consent, Forced Orgasm, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Painful Sex, Physical Abuse, Rape/Non-con Elements, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25581226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voxofthevoid/pseuds/voxofthevoid
Summary: “I am the wolf, sweetheart, and they already threw you to me.” The grin vanishes abruptly, and then it’s just Steve, blue eyes intent on Bucky’s. “They won’t kill you. Won’t lock you up. You’re theirs, aren’t you?"“Bullshit,” he snaps. “It’s not that simple.”"Of course not. But it’s always easier when there’s a monster to slay and a damsel to save.”“Ain’t no damsel, pal.”Steve crawls up the bed, sinuous and eerily graceful. Bucky flattens himself, willingly trapped under Steve’s powerful bulk. When Steve speaks, his body seems to reverberate with the words.“But I am a monster. And that’s enough, isn’t it?”Bucky doesn’t have a retort that wouldn’t be a willful lie. He closes his eyes and lies there, lets Steve lick a hot strip up his neck and bite at his lips until they bleed.Steve licks the blood off and pulls back with red on his teeth.“We all love our stories,” Steve says, and he sounds distant now, half-smile quirking his lips and he stares right through Bucky. “Our fantasies. They told me I was a hero too.”-The many faces of Steve Rogers—and Bucky, etched into each one.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: tear me to pieces, skin to bone (hello, welcome home) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1702297
Comments: 59
Kudos: 320





	flames, they licked the walls (tenderly they turned to dust, all that i adored)

**Author's Note:**

> The main arc ended with the last part. This is more to show the dynamics they’ve settled into and fuel ideas about their future. There’s some non-chrono stuff in this, but they’re easy to spot. **17 October 2014, 18:24** is set a few weeks after Part 2. **14 November 2015, 23:06** happens a few months after Part 3.
> 
> If you wanna talk, my [inbox](https://voxofthevoid.tumblr.com/) is always open!
> 
> The art is all kocuria’s magic—you can find her on [tumblr](https://kocuria.tumblr.com/) <3

* * *

* * *

Bucky finds it stashed under a couch cushion.

He’s not even snooping, just fidgeting in search of the ever-elusive perfect sleep position. The corner of it pokes him in the ear, and it’s instinct more than anything to tug it free, expecting a knife or something equally lethal.

He gets a sketchpad instead.

Bucky blinks at it. Caught up in the exhausted frustration of having his sleep disturbed, he thinks nothing of flipping it open. The significance of finding this here, in the house—safe house because Steve doesn’t have houses, homes, not really—he shares with Steve, doesn’t hit until Bucky is staring into a monochrome rendition of his own face.

He drops the pad in sheer shock.

He picks it up just as quickly, jolting upright. He stares at the bland blue cover, not sure what to do, and he doesn’t know why his body arbitrarily decides to lead him off the couch and into the bedroom.

Bucky drops on the edge of the bed with the sketchpad closed and clutched to his chest like a secret. Maybe it is. This sure feels illicit, sitting on rumpled sheets he rolled out of a few hours earlier, unsure whether the scent of sex was only in his head. It’s not—bad, not when Steve’s around and Bucky can’t think past his touch, his heavy presence, but Steve’s been gone since morning, meeting with the kind of people who keep him and Bucky hopping from country to country. Bucky has no interest in that aspect of this life, and Steve, for once, doesn’t push him. Bucky’s pretty sure that it’s because Steve likes how he’s the only person Bucky really interacts with. Probably also likes that it’s by choice on Bucky’s part; Steve still doesn’t understand he has never been a choice for Bucky.

The flash of guilt doesn’t stop Bucky from opening it, doesn’t stop the swooping thrill in his gut when he sees his face on the very first page.

Well, not him, not quite. This is the man he used to be before war touched his life. It’s so distant, those times, and Bucky finds a stranger’s face in the short-haired, clean-shaven boy Steve has captured on this page.

It’s a lovely sketch though. There’s something—Bucky wouldn’t call it affection, even tenderness. Biased, probably, by what he knows of Steve, not the man he used to be either, before or in the war, but the person he is now, who doesn’t hold anything as gentle-sounding as affection. Love, yes, but Bucky has learned that can be as terrible a thing as hatred sometimes.

He settles, in the end, on meticulous. A keen eye for detail. How the left side of Bucky’s mouth lifts a little higher than the right in a smile that’s not quite a smirk but captures something like mischief, like invitation, in its lopsided curl. Those two thick strands of hair curled over his forehead, lumpy from too much cream and ruffled from the million and one times Bucky tried to tuck it back into his slicked-back hairdo. A gleam in the graphite-grey eyes that defy words and should probably defy such faithful reproduction but doesn’t, lets itself be coaxed onto paper instead, as easy for Steve as everything else about Bucky.

The serum gave Steve photographic memory. But this isn’t a face Steve would have seen in the war. His enhanced eyes wouldn’t have stamped this expression into his mind forever.

Bucky tries not to think too hard about that and closes the sketchpad before tears can drip on it.

He wipes his face on his sleeve and contemplates his find. He can just put it away, do what’s probably the right thing. He never knew Steve still drew, and they’ve been living together, killing together, for two years now. He knows a lot of things about Steve, intimate and trivial and everything in between, and he earned each piece of the puzzle with blood and tears and suffocating love. And it’s not that none of those hit him like sledgehammer, just that this feels different.

Bucky knows why.

Steve, the old Steve, never hid his sketches from Bucky, not since he was ten and doodled a cartoon figure in the corner of Bucky’s math notebook.

It’s a stupid thing to cry over, at least when he has a hundred other, more pertinent reasons for tears. But Bucky finds himself wiping furiously at his face again and again. And it’s aggrieved fury that drives him to open the sketchbook again, though he keeps his touch gentle on the pages.

He has the passing thought that he’s violating some kind of boundary and almost laughs himself sick at how many violations have happened between them, how many boundaries have been shattered.

By the time he calms down, Bucky’s not sleepy at all and the page in his lap has Steve’s face in it.

Even at first glance, it’s clear that this image isn’t as carefully rendered as that of Bucky’s. He drinks it in hungrily anyway, staring at quick, shaded sketches of Steve. They’re full-bodied pictures, unlike the closer portraits of Bucky. Steve in an ill-fitting coat, in uniform at Camp Lehigh, in patriotic stars and stripes. One of him naked, except there’s no head drawn and the body is bulkier than Steve was before Hydra got hold of him, the skin scarred viciously.

Bucky stares at that one for a very long time.

There’s one, only one, sketch of Peggy Carter.

Bucky realizes all too soon that the pad, not more than a hundred pages, is almost full. The last section is filled with page after page of a book with a star in the center, drawn from a myriad of angles. Bucky doesn’t understand the fascination, not until he reaches the last drawing. It’s the only one that’s colored. The red is messy, violent, strokes of it slipping outside the stark black lines of the book’s outline.

The door opens, and Bucky drops the pad again.

Steve looms in the doorway, peering curiously at Bucky. It says a lot about Bucky’s distraction and Steve’s skill that Bucky didn’t hear him come in. He freezes, the sketchpad still open on his lap. Steve’s eyes flick down towards it but don’t linger, returning to meet Bucky’s wide-eyed stare as he strides into the room. Bucky wonders, distantly, where he should close the book, too late though the gesture is, but he can’t will his fingers to move.

Steve stops beside Bucky and lays a casually possessive hand on the top of his head.

“I—” Bucky starts, only to snap his mouth shut as any and all excuses flee his mind. He settles on a weak, “Steve.”

“Hey,” Steve greets calmly. He’s looking at the drawing of the book. “Don’t worry about that old thing. I burned it.”

And then he’s yanking Bucky’s head back by the hair and bowing to take him in a kiss. It’s hard and demanding, Steve’s tongue swiping wetly over Bucky’s lips and flicking at their seam. Bucky opens up for it, something in him going limp and easy. He releases his death grip on the sketchpad as his muscles lose their tension and turn liquid. Steve kisses him long and good, and when he pulls back, Bucky’s left panting and dizzy.

“You eat?” Steve asks.

Bucky has to take a moment before he can summon a response.

“Y-yeah. Leftovers for you in the fridge.”

Steve smiles down at him, appreciative as well as approving. Bucky doesn’t know when he’ll stop perking up at these scraps of praise, doesn’t know if it’s even possible when nothing Steve has done so far as dulled that driving need to please him, to make him happy. Maybe, perversely, it’s the casual cruelty Steve is capable of that makes Bucky cling so tightly to the kindness.

Steve swipes his thumb over Bucky’s cheekbone. The tears have long since dried, but Bucky gets the feeling that Steve knows somehow.

“Thank you,” Steve tells him. “Been a long day. I’ll eat something, shower. Got something for you though, so don’t fall asleep on me.”

“I won’t,” Bucky says automatically. “What is it?”

“It’s a surprise.”

Steve’s smile is perfectly pleasant. Bucky’s stomach churns. You can never tell, with Steve, whether the surprise is a box of fancy chocolates or the decapitated body of someone Bucky cares about.

Well, there’s not many of those left now. The Avengers have more or less washed their hands off him. Natasha is the only one who still tries, and the last time she did, Steve put a bullet in her shoulder, and the only reason it wasn’t in her skull was that Bucky grabbed Steve’s arm on time. He paid for that, yes, but the price was well worth it. But Bucky’s shot at them too, aiming more to deter than even wound, which is a lot more than can be said for the S.H.I.E.L.D agents unfortunate enough to cross their paths.

Steve kisses him on the forehead, jolting Bucky out of his thoughts. He leaves without another glance at Bucky or the sketch. Bucky grabs the book again, meaning to close it and put it away, but he can’t stop staring in morbid fascination at the angry slashes of red. There’s a story there, in Steve’s words, but for the life of him, Bucky can’t puzzle it out.

He flips back to the earlier pages. Stops, almost reluctantly, at one that’s of him; not the Brooklyn boy or the tired soldier but Bucky as he is now, long-haired and stubbled and hunted. The attention to detail is no less than that of the other drawings. Bucky flips the page.

The next one is him too, but a full-bodied sketch this time. He’s in bed, naked and asleep. Battered too, not from battle but from a round of Steve’s exacting attention. He knows this is a scene pulled from reality. He can almost see it, Steve looming over his sleeping form, eyeing the blood and bruises on Bucky’s body, maybe touching the scars on his stomach that are never allowed to fade.

Bucky shivers and finally sets the book down. He puts it on Steve’s pillow first, but moves it to the night stand instead. He forces himself to get up and leave the room.

Steve’s eating slightly cold Chinese right out of the container when Bucky passes him by on his way to the bathroom. He’s got his laptop open on the table and is typing one-handed, not paying any attention to Bucky. That, as always, instills a peculiar blend of relief and pouty disappointment.

He takes his time in the shower even knowing Steve wants to use it. When he emerges, warm and scrubbed pink, feeling pleasantly tender inside and out, Steve’s waiting outside, naked save for the towel draped over his shoulder. Bucky stops in place, staring unashamedly, and when his gaze makes a slow, meandering way to Steve’s face, he finds him smiling in clear amusement.

Steve walks past him and into the bathroom, but his hand strays to the side and gives Bucky’s ass a good, thorough squeeze. Bucky shudders and whips around to yelp his indignation at the closed bathroom door.

He feels remarkably less tense when he returns to the bedroom. And it’s nice to snuggle into the blankets in sweatpants and a loose tee. Sleep tugs lazily at his eyelids, but Bucky fights it off. Steve will probably wake him even if he falls asleep, but it’s better for everyone concerned if Bucky doesn’t let it go that far. He can never say how benign Steve’s tactics will be, no matter what the context.

Steve comes back soon enough, hair wet and one hand holding his laptop. He’s not wearing anything but black boxers. Bucky enjoys the view, especially when Steve bends over to place the laptop on the bed.

“Sorry I was late,” Steve says, turning away to root around in the closet. “The meeting went fine, but I got news afterward that S.H.I.E.L.D found two of our safe houses.”

“Oh.” Earlier, Bucky would have worried that Steve thought him responsible. They’re well past that. “You don’t seem very concerned.”

Steve shrugs, the motion made awkward by the ragged T-shirt he’s in the middle of pulling on.

“I’m not. They were ex-Hydra bases. Bound to get busted eventually.”

“Not afraid they’re going to cut off our resources? Track us down and smoke us out?”

Steve smiles at Bucky. There’s something proud in that expression, and Bucky fleetingly wonders if it’s the ease with which he uses collective pronouns these days. Steve gets weird about things like that. Not in a bad way, but it makes Bucky wonder why he’s taken so long to understand that, for better or for worse, Bucky is ride or die for him.

He’s been riding a while, though, so maybe dying’s on the menu.

“They can try,” Steve says, still smiling. “Worse things than Fury or the Avengers have failed to kill me. And capture—let’s say I dare them to show me something I haven’t seen.”

Bucky swallows that bitter pill with considerable grace. Steve has long since torn free of Hydra’s tendrils, but the shadow lingers—in him and between them.

“And what about me, hotshot?” he asks, keeping his tone deliberately light. “Gonna just throw me to the wolves?”

Steve’s grin doesn’t widen so much as sharpen. He stalks forward a few steps, and a man shouldn’t look so dangerous in his sleepwear, but Steve pulls it off.

“I am the wolf, sweetheart, and they already threw you to me.” The grin vanishes abruptly, and then it’s just Steve, blue eyes intent on Bucky’s. “They won’t kill you. Won’t lock you up. You’re theirs, aren’t you? As far as they’re concerned, all they need to do is remove me from the picture to get you back.”

Bucky can’t help the burst of anger at the thought of Steve dying, being killed, on behalf of Bucky.

“Bullshit,” he snaps. “It’s not that simple.”

Steve gives a long, slow blink. This time, his smile is faint and fleeting.

“Of course it’s not,” he says, not unkindly. “I bet they know it too. But they wouldn’t want to accept that, would they? It’s always easier when there’s a monster to slay and a damsel to save.”

“Ain’t no damsel, pal.”

Steve crawls up the bed, sinuous and eerily graceful. Bucky flattens himself, willingly trapped under Steve’s powerful bulk. When Steve speaks, his body seems to reverberate with the words.

“But I am a monster. And that’s enough, isn’t it?”

Bucky doesn’t have a retort that wouldn’t be a willful lie. He closes his eyes and lies there, lets Steve lick a hot strip up his neck and bite at his lips until they bleed.

Steve licks the blood off and pulls back with red on his teeth.

“We all love our stories,” Steve says, and he sounds distant now, half-smile quirking his lips and he stares right through Bucky. “Our fantasies. They told me I was a hero too.”

It takes Bucky several moments to understand that _they_ mean Hydra, not the American army. Steve refocuses with a blink, and his strange smile vanishes. The expression that replaces it isn’t particularly pleasant either.

“I believed them,” he tells Bucky matter-of-factly. “Until I didn’t. They used the words then, but that didn’t last past Karpov. Had to hunt him down. He didn’t beg once, you know. To be fair, I stapled his mouth shut, but you can always tell. It’s in the eyes.”

Bucky listens to him in vague horror. There are pieces sliding into place in a puzzle he can’t help constructing, but the final picture remains blurred, out of his reach.

“I don’t know what you’re saying,” is all he can manage.

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve murmurs. He’s looking right at Bucky now, seeing only him. A thumb swipes at his mouth, gathering the blood that has welled up from the healing bites. “You beg all the time, Buck. That’s in the eyes too.”

Bucky turns his head away, screws his eyes shut.

Steve’s mouth brushes softly over his throat, and then he’s moving, unfolding from his four-limbed crouch over Bucky.

Bucky just lies there, feeling the mattress shift as Steve moves about. He’s not allowed the respite for long. Something cold nudges his hip, followed by Steve’s hand on his arm, shaking gently.

“Up you get,” Steve tells him. “Told you I got something for you.”

“If it’s your dick, I’m not interested,” Bucky says without opening his eyes.

“Liar.”

Steve sounds gently amused, and there’s something so appealing about that that Bucky has to look at his face. Steve’s expression matches his voice, and his smile widens when he sees Bucky watching him. He’s unsettlingly cheerful tonight. That usually doesn’t bode well for anyone, least of all Bucky, but he can’t help reacting to it anyway, drawn in like a sunflower unfurling its petals to the sun.

Steve holds out a hand, and Bucky takes it, lets Steve pull him upright and kiss him softly on the mouth. The cut’s healed now, but it twinges a little.

Bucky watches a little bemusedly as Steve crawls over to sit back against the headboard and beckons Bucky to settle between his legs. Bucky obeys and is immediately yanked back so he’s flush against Steve’s chest, tucked against that warm, solid bulk. There’s a sense of safety to it, which is the most ridiculous association Bucky’s mind has produced in recent memory, but it’s not that bad. Anyway, he likes the proximity, likes being held by Steve.

He melts back into Steve and thinks he hears approval in Steve’s pleased hum.

Steve puts his laptop on Bucky’s thighs and holds him in a quasi-embrace as he clicks through folders. Bucky watches the procedures with mild curiosity, mostly interested in soaking up this rare feeling. He goes to sleep in Steve’s arm all the time, but neither of them sleeps through the night unaided by thoroughly exhausting sex or the occasional supersoldier-grade painkillers. He doesn’t get to just _exist_ like this often, cradled against Steve without any threat looming over him.

As if sensing Bucky’s mood, Steve kisses his temple, lips lingering on his hairline. Bucky sighs and tilts his head, a quiet invitation that Steve takes up, hands unmoving on the keyboard as he brushes a line of soft, delicate kisses along one side of Bucky’s face.

“You’re sweet tonight,” Steve murmurs, mouth moving against the corner of Bucky’s lips.

“Nah,” Bucky says quietly. “That’s you.”

Steve’s mouth curves into a smile.

“That so?” He sounds amused again but also like he knows a secret Bucky doesn’t. “I’ll be real sweet on you later, Buck. C’mon. Got something to show you.”

Bucky turns his face forward with considerable hesitance. All he can see on the screen are video files, their names a series of numbers that take a moment to register as dates and timestamps. Before he can pay closer attention, Steve hits play on one, and the screen turns dark as the player pops to life.

The first shot is a room. Familiar, but Bucky doesn’t place the plain green walls and spare furnishings until he sees the limp figure on the bed.

-

**_17 October 2014, 18:24_ **

The door opens with a telltale click, and Bucky doesn’t come awake so much as shake off the fog in his mind. He doesn’t sit up or do more than turn his head towards the door. He used to do all that, each and every time, but he’s always been a quick learner and he’s never had a more obvious lesson than the one this new Steve has taught him.

It's useless to fight, and it’s useless to beg.

Maybe if Bucky were willing to kill him, to even just _leave_ and never look back—

He’s not, so it doesn’t matter.

Steve’s dressed casually today—tonight?—in jeans and a white tank. It’s a less threatening look than the bulky all-black of his combat gear, but the tight tank top leaves little to the imagination, and Steve’s bulging muscles and scarred skin tell a tale of their own.

Bucky eyes the scars. They’re new. Probably won’t last more than a few days. They never do.

He doesn’t know where they are or who Steve fought to get those marks that weren’t there the last time Bucky saw him. He loses a lot of time and wakes up in a different room half the time. And he never sees outside of whatever bland walls are around him, not before Steve drugs him again and hauls him off.

Other things do happen in the interim, but Bucky’s not thinking about that now.

He knows Steve’s staring at him, but he doesn’t meet those eyes. He can never tell what he’s going to find in there, and these days, forewarned is not forearmed. It just makes it worse, the inevitability and the resignation.

Silence reins for several long moments. Steve’s the one to break it.

“You didn’t eat.”

Bucky flicks his eyes towards the untouched glass of juice and stack of small sandwiches on the bedside table. It’s unlikely that they’re laced with something. Whatever sedative Steve uses, it’s strong enough to resist the serum, but it has to be injected. The crook of Bucky’s elbow throbs with phantom stings, even though the track marks have long since vanished.

“Not hungry,” Bucky says when it’s clear Steve’s not waiting for an answer.

Steve tsks.

“You’re wasting away, Buck. That serum of yours needs sustenance.”

Bucky snorts humorlessly.

“Yeah?” He doesn’t have the energy to flinch at how dull he sounds. “How about you take me out? Hear that sort of thing works up an appetite.”

“I think we have very different definitions for that phrase. Don’t think you’d like mine much.”

It’s an objectively terrible joke, but what matters is that Steve made it in the first place. Bucky meets his eyes, a little stunned. Steve doesn’t show much emotion, but Bucky think he sees a faint quirk to his mouth. Those pretty blue eyes are like ice, the way they always are when not burning with unholy fire.

Bucky takes a moment to mull over what Steve actually said, humor aside.

“I don’t know, pal,” he says at length. “Sometimes, I think I would.”

Even that ghost of a smile disappears. Steve’s always had an impressive scowl, and Bucky used to think that the five-foot-nothing firecracker he knew wore it better than his oddly gentle captain, but he’s starting to admit that maybe the expression was always meant for this version of Steve, the one who radiates danger like he was molded in horror and polished with terror.

“Death isn’t in the cards, Bucky,” Steve says, and Bucky wonders, not for the first time, what name you can give to the terrible things Steve feels for him.

He used to call it love, coined something sweet and rose-tinted when they were boys, and didn’t change it when they grew into men who liked to play rough. But their ragged edges fit together then. Now, Bucky just gets cut.

Bucky says nothing, and Steve doesn’t seem to expect an answer. He stalks towards the bed, and Bucky’s heartbeat kicks up a notch with every step. Steve stops just short of the bed and looks down at Bucky, mouth pressed into a flat line.

“I won’t keep you prisoner forever,” he says, and he sounds almost bored. “But I can’t trust you just like that, can I?”

Bucky remains silent because he honestly doesn’t know what to say. Steve’s scowl eases into a frown. He steps closer and reaches down, and it’s insulting, the ease with which he hauls Bucky up with nothing but a grip on his left arm. The plates recalibrate threateningly, but Steve barely bats an eye. The dark band on his wrist contrasts starkly with his pale skin.

Bucky stumbles, and Steve steadies him with both hands, holding Bucky by the shoulder as he eyes him critically. Bucky fights not to squirm; he isn’t wasting away, as Steve put it, but he has lost weight and his face is haggard each time he looks in the mirror. The worst part is that the sight isn’t very different from what he used to see the first year or so after he woke up in the ice. It took a long time, between the camaraderie of the Avengers and the demanding missions at S.H.I.E.L.D, for Bucky to feel like more than a ghost drifting through an age that did not belong to him.

With Steve, at least he knows he’s not the only ghost.

Steve makes no comment on Bucky’s state. He yanks him forward instead, right into a kiss. Bucky makes a surprised noise even though he shouldn’t, not after all this time, and Steve takes advantage of it to slip his tongue inside. Bucky bites down on it, not too hard but enough that Steve pulls back with a hiss.

Bucky braces himself for a anything from a hit to fingers forcing their way into his mouth, but all Steve does is curl his tongue over his upper lip and rub a little. His expression stays calm, but that doesn’t mean it’s safe.

“Behave,” Steve says mildly, and Bucky shudders violently enough that his knees threaten to give in.

Steve doesn’t give him the opportunity to just collapse. He holds Bucky tighter, their bodies flush together, warmth eating warmth through thin layers of fabric. Steve kisses him again, more teeth than tongue this time, biting and tugging at Bucky’s lips until he starts breathing sharply through his nose with whimpers trapped in his throat. Steve’s touches become different, then, less about holding Bucky in place and more of an exploration. There isn’t an inch of Bucky’s body that he doesn’t already know, but every time, he touches Bucky like each newly bared patch of skin is a revelation.

It makes Bucky ache inside, in a manner far less tangible than the livid bruises Steve likes to leave on his skin. It feels like he’s staking a claim, turning Bucky’s body into a canvass for his devouring hunger. The scars on his stomach, bearing Steve’s name, throb hot.

Steve cups his ass through his pants and squeezes. Bucky gasps against Steve’s mouth and doesn’t realize his mistake until Steve’s licking in, confident in his claim, and this time, Bucky doesn’t bite him because he’s preoccupied with the hands casually pulling his waistband down.

Steve must lose his patience somewhere between Bucky’s thighs and knees. He gives a good yank, and the cheap cotton tears like tissue paper. It leaves Bucky naked, the only clothes on him pooled around his feet in shreds. He has wondered, more than once, why Steve bothers giving him clothing at all when all he seems to prefer Bucky dressed in just bruises.

He’s shoved backward and falls ass-first on the bed, legs dangling off the edge. He contemplates lying there and just letting Steve arrange him as he wills, but when Steve reaches over to do exactly that, Bucky finds himself scrambling backward as if the flimsy headboard will provide him some sort of protection.

It doesn’t. In fact, all it does is trap him between a wall and Steve’s looming form.

Steve looks amused, kneeling on the bed. He strips off his tank top but keeps his pants, and Bucky doesn’t know whether he appreciates that or not. He’s very familiar with Steve’s body these days, especially with what’s between his legs, but his own soft cock taunts him from where it lies against one thigh.

He doesn’t mean to, but looking at his cock draws Steve’s attention to it. Bucky makes a weak and mostly mental effort to shrivel into a defensive lump as Steve reaches for him, but Steve barely seems to feel the resistance. He spreads Bucky’s legs with effortless ease and settles between them, leaning over Bucky with a smirk.

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks, stroking Bucky’s thighs absently.

Bucky says nothing. Steve doesn’t demand an answer, just leans in for another kiss, pressing his hot, open mouth over Bucky’s tightly pressed lips. He licks over them but doesn’t try to kiss him deeper, just turns his attention to the stubbled line of Bucky’s jaw. Teeth nip along sensitive skin and tug at one earlobe before Steve changes direction and starts mouthing his way down Bucky’s throat.

He knows what he’s doing though. When he takes the time to do more than flip Bucky over and make him scream, it’s with the explicit purpose of driving Bucky crazy.

By the time Steve closes his lips around one peaked nipple, Bucky’s panting through his mouth and trying not to let any sound escape. Steve doesn’t linger on his chest the way he likes to sometimes, but he doesn’t move on before getting Bucky’s nipples wet and red, sucking on them till they’re throbbing and bidding them goodbye with a dirty flick of his tongue.

Bucky grips the sheets for dear life, and they tear when he yanks helplessly.

Steve looks at him from under those damnably long lashes, the dark of his pupils dominating the blue. Bucky can’t look away, and Steve doesn’t release him from the spell of his gaze as he sucks lazily down Bucky’s belly, taking his sweet time. Bucky holds his breath as the tip of a warm tongue slides over the still-raw scars that form Steve’s name.

Steve likes messing around there. When he sucks over the edge of the _E_ Bucky loses his battle with his throat and whimpers pitifully.

“Ssh,” Steve whispers, rubbing his lips against his name, expression darkly pleased. “You’re alright.”

Bucky makes a small, wounded sound.

His cock is half-hard. That’s a battle Bucky lost a very long time ago.

Steve takes him in his mouth. Bucky locks his muscles so he won’t thrust into the sudden, overwhelming heat. He can’t take his eyes off Steve, who’s got his own closed as he lets Bucky slide deeper into his mouth, down his throat. Bucky is very, _very_ familiar with how it feels to have Steve’s cock in his mouth, and the thing is that he feels as terrified now as he does then. The power Steve has over him is a polymorphous monster, and these days, Bucky trembles at the thought of it.

It didn’t use to be like that, but that was another life, and they were both different men.

Bucky’s cock doesn’t share any of his reservations. It surges to full life in Steve’s mouth, coaxed into dripping precome by clever strokes of his tongue. Steve doesn’t slide his mouth off until Bucky’s throbbing with need and making soft noises with every other breath. And even then, he doesn’t go far, just grabs Bucky’s dick with one hand to push it upwards, baring the underside to Steve’s wet tongue. He laps there, teasing little flicks, and sucks gently on a prominent vein. He tilts his head to the side when that makes Bucky cry out, as if he didn’t know how Bucky would react.

And then he does it again, harder this time, and Bucky damn near vibrates out of his skin.

Steve waits another second, almost expectant. Bucky just stares at him, eyes wide as he heaves for breath. He wants to close his eyes and tune this all out, but he can’t take his eyes off Steve and anyway, he knows it’s wasted effort. He’d have to be dead or asleep not to react to Steve’s hands and mouth, and even the latter isn’t that sure a bet, as Steve has proven more than once.

Steve holds Bucky’s gaze as he leans over to seal his lips over the head of Bucky’s cock. It’s a sweet kind of pleasure, Steve’s mouth warm and undemanding as it just rests there, not even suckling. Bucky waits for the other shoe to drop, heart in his throat, but he can’t deny the needy tightening of his gut at the sight and heat of Steve’s mouth on him. Steve’s tongue starts flicking over his mouthful, dipping into the slit as if to taste the fluid gathered there. Bucky imagines the taste of himself in Steve’s mouth and whines, high and helpless.

Steve can’t grin with his mouth stretched around Bucky’s dick, but the look in his eyes says enough.

He wants something, and he’s not hiding it. Maybe he wants Bucky to beg—simper and plead for Steve to use his mouth, grant him release. And it’s not that Bucky’s above it, not that he’s too strong to resist, just that Steve hasn’t broken him down enough yet for all sense and pride to flee the scene. There’s a pattern to how these things go, and Steve is breaking it.

Steve slides his tongue under the foreskin, eases it back to expose more of the head, and Bucky feels choked just watching, but he can’t look away. He still doesn’t beg, but there’s no ignoring the need churning in his gut.

Maybe Steve gives up because he stops playing, after that. He closes his mouth and just slides his mouth down, swallowing Bucky in a violent rush. Bucky’s hips jerk up, but Steve’s hands are on them the next instant, pushing them flat down on the bed. Steve makes a disapproving noise that comes out distorted through his mouthful of dick.

“Sorry,” Bucky says without thinking. “I—fuck.”

Steve mercifully returns to blowing Bucky, using his throat and tongue with deft skill that soon robs Bucky off the ability to think or breathe or do anything other than claw at the sheets and gasp for air. Steve drives him to the edge with single-minded determination, and it’s hard, in the face of his mounting pleasure, to cling to fear, let alone apathy. Bucky starts writhing, hips held still by Steve’s hands but back arching, legs wrapping around Steve’s broad shoulders.

“I’m going to—Steve, if you don’t, I’ll— _Steve_.”

He wants to tug at Steve’s hair, to warn or to just hold on, but Bucky’s fingers refuse to detach from torn strips of the sheets. Shudders wrack his body as he hurls headfirst into the pleasure clawing up his insides, but Steve doesn’t stop, doesn’t ease up, and it’s as good as permission. It’s maddening, his wet heat and tight throat, working Bucky over and over and—

Bucky shouts Steve’s name, and then the pain hits.

His left arm’s on fire, and it burns through his body, licking up his spine and into every fucking cell of him. The name on his lips turns into a mangled scream, and through it all, Bucky keeps coming, body jerking violently through his climax. Steve’s mouth doesn’t leave him. He drinks down every drop Bucky’s softening cock has to give and holds his hips still as he convulses from the pain.

It's the worst blend of sensations Bucky has ever felt in his life, and he doesn’t know he’s sobbing until the sounds ring in his own ears.

And afterwards, there’s only numbness. His cock slips out of Steve’s slack mouth, and Bucky is left a dazed lump of flesh. He doesn’t understand what happened, not until Steve rises onto his knees and Bucky’s gaze sticks to the metal band on his wrist.

It takes him another few seconds to speak. Shivers seize his body intermittently, knocks the air out of his lungs.

“Why?” he asks, and it’s stupid to feel so betrayed, stupider still to let it show, but Bucky’s too raw, too broken open, to hide anything now.

Steve meets his eyes calmly.

“I was curious,” he says.

He’s not gentle when he flips Bucky over. He whines into the mattress. The shocks have subsided, but it leaves him winded, weak as a newborn kitten under Steve’s hands. Bucky can’t do more than mewl weakly when Steve grabs his hands and locks them in the shackles attached the headboard. They’re a common fixture on every bed he’s woken up in, and it doesn’t matter than they’re not strong enough to contain his left arm when it’s immobilized by a flick of Steve’s finger.

Bucky tugs at it anyway in instinctive panic, but his shuddering muscles find no give.

Steve forces his thighs wider and settles in between them, his hands running possessively up Bucky’s legs. Bucky squirms, but there’s nowhere to go, no escape. He’s acutely aware, now that the pain has receded, of the mess he’s made of himself. And like this, he’s lying flat on a pool of his own sweat, sticky warmth cementing him to the sheets.

At least it’s not blood.

Steve grabs his ass and gives both cheeks a firm, almost painful squeeze. Bucky can’t make more than a garbled protest before fingers are sliding down his crack and pushing roughly at his hole. A finger slides in, just to the first knuckle, but Bucky’s dry and tense and nothing about Steve is small anymore.

“Hurts,” he grits out through clenched teeth, knowing full well it’s useless, that Steve maybe even likes it, hearing Bucky say that.

Sure enough, Steve doesn’t acknowledge it. He tries to push his finger deeper and does, its girth burning its way inside. Bucky yanks at his chains and tries to wrench away, but Steve just follows him, one huge palm spread over Bucky’s ass and the other writhing deeper into him.

“So fucking tight,” Steve says, hooking his finger. Bucky cries out, eyes burning afresh. “No matter how much I fuck you, you just tighten back up, don’t you? Could give it to you every hour for a damn week and you’d still—”

Steve slaps his ass, a hot blooming pain that spreads through Bucky. He can’t help clenching around the finger and groaning when that makes the sensation more intense.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, hunger darkening his voice. “Still so tight. What if I fuck you dry, hm? Think you could take me that way?”

If Steve asked this before—in _the_ before—Bucky would have thought he was joking, a taunt mixed into the dirty talk. Nothing he’d have to respond to. He’s got no such comfort now, with this poison of man he can’t fucking quit. Fear turns his blood to ice, and it takes so much effort to keep his voice from breaking when he speaks.

“No, I can’t.” He takes another deep breath. “You’d tear me up.”

It’s the wrong thing to say. Bucky knows it the second the last syllable leaves his mouth and Steve’s grip on his ass tightens painfully.

“I know,” Steve murmurs, pulling his finger out of Bucky. His rim stings. “I want to. The way you’d scream for me.”

It still doesn’t quite register, the reality of it, not until the mattress shifts as Steve moves and there’s something big and blunt nudging Bucky’s hole. Even then, it takes him a moment to react past the crushing wave of disbelief.

“Steve? What, no, Steve, don’t—take it— _ah_!”

He cuts off with a short, shrill scream as Steve starts pushing in.

It _burns_ , Steve’s finger nothing to the all-consuming pain of this. Bucky pulls at his binds and tries to scramble away, but his frenzied writhing is held in check by Steve’s grip on his hips. He doesn’t stop, just keeps pushing and pushing and—

“Stop,” Bucky whimpers, digging nails into his own palms. “I’m sorry, Steve, please, pull out, I’m sorry, I won’t—I can’t—”

“Ssh,” Steve hushes. A hand grips Bucky’s hair, yanks his head back. “Just take it.”

Bucky shakes his head, scalp aching. Steve’s—god, he doesn’t know how deep it’s in, can’t feel anything but a searing, violent throb as his body struggles against the rough, dry intrusion.

Steve pulls back, then, cock scraping Bucky’s insides, and slams back in, and it still doesn’t go all the way inside, and Steve keeps trying and trying, holding Bucky in place and _breaking_ him.

Bucky screams his throat raw.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, please,” he rasps, lips wet from tears. “Steve, no, don’t, please—”

Steve keeps fucking as if Bucky’s, and it must hurt him too, but he doesn’t make a sound and doesn’t stop, and pain spreads through the whole of Bucky, mingling with the aches already there and turning his whole body into an open, gushing wound.

Bucky doesn’t have the strength to do more than keen faintly into the mattress when Steve bottoms out. His groin presses close to Bucky’s ass, balls slapping his thigh when Steve keeps moving in short, rapid jerks. Every twitch rips open fresh trails of fire inside Bucky, pulls out whimpering cries and senseless words.

“Sorry, I’m sorry,” he finds himself saying, over and over. “Please stop, I’m sorry.”

Steve strokes his hair, nails scritching the scalp, and it could be gentle, the gesture, but Steve makes it a threat of its own.

“I told you,” he says, and Bucky shudders to hear the strain in his voice, the strangled pleasure. “Knew you could take it. Fucking hell, you feel—”

He moves, grinding his hips into Bucky, and Steve’s huge when he’s wetter than a clogged sink, but like this, he feels—monstrous, as if he’s slid through Bucky like a blade and will drag out his guts, will leave him bloody and broken when he’s done.

And Steve has, he will again, but it’s never any less horrifying, what he—what _they_ —have become.

Bucky’s tears are silent, but only until Steve starts thrusting again, except he can’t, not really, and every move he makes rips savagely into Bucky. He can’t die like this, he knows that, but he can’t seem to believe it.

“Please,” Bucky mumbles.

When he swallows, he tastes tears and blood.

Steve pulls out suddenly. Bucky’s rim feels hot and swollen, twitching painfully in the sudden emptiness. The hollowness inside him is almost tangible, but the pain is worse, his walls throbbing around the spaces Steve left.

Familiar slick sounds come from behind him. When Steve tries to push into him again, his dick is wet, but Bucky lurches away in primal terror. His right wrist hurts the more he tries to leverage his position, but he manages, somehow, to get his knees under him. That’s as far as he gets with his harebrained plan before Steve grabs his hip with one hand and thrusts two fingers into his ass.

They hook over his hole, like a casually restraining grip on an animal’s collar.

Bucky lets out a wounded sound and goes very still.

“Honestly, Buck,” Steve says, exasperated. “I do what you want, and this is the thanks I get?”

Steve shakes his hand, the one inside Bucky, and there are no words to describe the sensations that slice through him.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky whimpers, frozen like that, on his knees with his hands twisted awkwardly in front of him. Held in place by those two fingers. “I’m—thank you? Thank you. Please. I’m sorry.”

Everything burns, his face, his eyes, his throat, the heat intensifying with each word.

Steve’s fingers take their time sliding out of him. He taps Bucky’s hole with one, an approving little touch that makes hot tears spill from Bucky’s eyes. Then, Steve makes an interested hum.

“Look at that,” he says.

Turning his head is categorically beyond Bucky’s current capacity, and he’s terrified to anyway, not sure he wants to see whatever the hell put that tone in Steve’s voice. But Steve doesn’t give him a choice. A palm flattens itself between Bucky’s shoulder blades and push down firmly. He collapses like a marionette with its strings cut, and it’s almost a relief to have Steve pin him place, take away the option of escape. Bucky finds himself grateful, sooner or later, for that.

Steve leans over him too, his skin radiating warmth against Bucky’s. He yanks Bucky’s head up by his hair, having the grip down to an art form by now, not that it doesn’t hurt when Steve wants it to. A finger is stuck in his vision, and Bucky has to blink a couple of times to focus on the blur of red.

Red with blood. Bucky’s blood, staining fingers from when he—

The sound he makes isn’t even human.

“Sweet of you to try and get wet for me,” Steve says, amusement turning his words into daggers.

Steve lets him go, then, and Bucky doesn’t bother resisting when his hips are grabbed and raised for Steve to fuck sharply into him. He is wet but not much, and it’s no kinder a violation, sharp bolts of pain mingling with pulsing aches to turn into a barrage of hurt that leaves Bucky panting and weak-limbed.

“Better,” Steve rasps, balls-deep in Bucky and grinding like he can pierce deeper. “Easier this way, ain’t it? Waste of a good ass to take you that dry.”

Steve slaps his ass, and Bucky cries out feebly. Steve does it again, squeezing the abused flesh afterwards, and he’s moving all the while, thrusts turning longer and rougher, carving the shape of him deep into Bucky’s insides. His body is a monument to Steve; the pain and the blood always vanishes from his skin, but Bucky never forgets so much as a single finger-shaped bruise.

Steve stops fucking but doesn’t pull out when he drapes his body over Bucky’s, smothering him in his solid bulk. He starts moving again, breaths falling hot and heavy in Bucky’s ear, mingling with the noise of his own rough breathing.

“You shouldn’t underestimate yourself, Buck,” Steve says. He kisses Bucky clumsily on the ear, tugs with his teeth at a lobe. “You’ll take anything I give you. You’re the only one who can.”

He sounds—fond, almost. Pleased and proprietary.

Bucky shudders, body trembling against Steve, who breathes in sharply and speeds up, ramming his hips faster and faster into Bucky.

And he doesn’t know when it starts to feel good, when the sharp pain of where he’s torn inside gets buried under the pleasure of having something work his prostate relentlessly, when the heat filling his veins turns from horrified shame to horrified need. His cock is trapped between his body and the mattress, hardening slowly as the violent rocking of his body drives it into the bedding.

It shows, maybe in his breathing or the quality of the sounds he just can’t hold in. Steve, ever attuned to the rhythms of Bucky’s body, figures it out almost immediately.

He laughs, and it’s not a pleasant sound. His own climbing arousal deepens his voice and there’s something else too, something like mockery.

“Can you come like this?” he asks and doesn’t seem to expect or want an answer, fucking Bucky harder as if to seal his throat against any emerging words.

Noises escape, brittle little things.

It lasts a long time. Feels like it at least, the world narrowed down to Steve’s cock and Steve’s skin and Steve’s breath. Bucky feels oddly detached from his cock even as it starts drooling into the mattress, right until Steve shifts his angle and drives in just right and sends Bucky staggering over the edge.

Steve groans when Bucky starts clenching around him. He fucks Bucky through it, thrusts rough and brutal, all rhythm gone. Bucky grits his teeth through the oversensitivity, but pain has always sharpened his pleasure, and it does now, as he tightens convulsively around Steve’s plunging cock. He keens weakly.

Heat bursts in him, but Steve pulls out as he starts coming, and then it’s not just the inside that’s drenched in come. Come splatters on his hole, drips down his ass, and between Steve’s release painting his skin and Bucky’s own mess under his body, he feels—dirty. Nasty, used, and just left there as Steve’s weight disappears from his back, from the bed.

-

The video ends there.

The screen turns black, but when Steve hits pause, the bar at the end shows they’re only halfway through.

Bucky just sits there, blinking at the dark screen. Behind him, Steve is quiet too, his breathing slow and even. But his cock’s hard. Bucky can feel it at his back, and he wonders if he as the right to be horrified when there’s a telltale tent in his own pants. But horror isn’t in the equation right now. He’s just—numb.

When he finds his voice, he only manages a single word.

“Why?”

“Security concerns, mostly,” Steve answers instantly, calmly. It’s like he expected the question and who knows, maybe Bucky is just that predictable. “I set up the cameras first thing.”

He doesn’t say that Bucky already knows this. And he does, it’s just that he never connected that to even the vaguest possibility of something like _this_.

He remembers that day, remembers taking Steve dry and sobbing through it. He doesn’t remember his own face, splotchy red and swollen with crying, and he doesn’t remember the sweat-slick squirming of his own body as he fought helplessly against an unstoppable force. He can’t, because he never saw it, he just existed—a burning body and a tight hole.

But he does remember that Steve didn’t just go away. Came around the bed and manhandled Bucky’s limp body into his arms. Carried him to the bathroom and washed him in warm water, hands firm but not unkind. Gentle, almost.

He kissed Bucky too, sometime when they were dripping water on the bathroom floor, and Bucky knows he kissed back.

Steve’s hand, in the vivid now, comes to rest between Bucky’s legs, loosely cupping his erection. Bucky hisses and wraps his left hand around Steve’s wrist. He doesn’t pry it away, but he holds it still. Steve lets him.

“That’s not the only reason,” he says, proud that his voice doesn’t waver.

“I want to send a message,” Steve tells him. He kisses the side of Bucky’s throat, pressing a smile to where neck meets shoulder. “Shall I show you the rest?”

Bucky says nothing, but then, it’s not really a question.

-

**_14 November 2015, 23:06_ **

Steve’s already in bed by the time Bucky crawls out of a nice, long soak in the tub. He’s in a good mood. The mission was another Hydra splinter cell, and Steve can say what he wants about righteous rage, but at the end of the day, he gets his pound of flesh and Bucky gets his, and they’re both happy.

It's a whole other story when their targets are civilians or just anyone on the wrong end of an attractive bounty. Bucky doesn’t tend to make it to the bathroom on his own power those days, either because he couldn’t pull the trigger or because he did.

But today—today’s good.

He’s warm and clean from his bath, and he has Steve in his bed, naked and munching on an apple. It’s an incongruous sight, one which Bucky takes the time to appreciate.

There are times when it hits him, how _beautiful_ Steve is.

It doesn’t show much these days, not the way it used to. Steve carries himself differently, radiating the kind of condensed danger that makes your animal brain shrink back in terror. He’s still striking, attractive even at the most cursory glance, but it’s a cold beauty that doesn’t invite you to linger. You see him and you let him go, but of course, Bucky has never been able to let this man go.

But like this, lying bare on the bed and awash in the soft light of the bedside lamp, Steve looks soft and touchable, the kind of man you could mold yourself against and trust to hold you tight and safe.

It’s an illusion, colored by what Bucky remembers of a life that used to be and the two soldier-boys who lived it.

This Steve is the kind of man you could sink into and then never escape, and that’s where Bucky is now, isn’t it?

The sound of a throat being cleared jolts him out of his silent appraisal. Bucky meets the blue eyes under arched eyebrows, and it’s ridiculous that this is what makes him blush, considering everything he and Steve have done together in their lives.

Steve throws him the apple suddenly, and Bucky catches it instinctually. It looks nice, smells nice, and he presses his mouth to the unbroken red skin on one side before taking a large bite out of where Steve has already eaten into the flesh.

“S’good,” he says, swallowing his mouthful. “Enjoyed the market?”

“You would, more than me.”

Bucky shrugs and doesn’t deny it. Of the two of them, he’s always been the more social. He still is. It’s just that these days, he doesn’t usually feel like getting out of whatever place they’re holed up in. Steve doesn’t mind getting groceries or relieving the delivery guys of their burden, but he doesn’t enjoy human interaction the way Bucky still does when he’s in a good enough mood.

“Maybe tomorrow,” he says and sets about finishing the apple. It really is good.

Steve watches him the whole time. The look on his face isn’t unreadable so much as defiant of easy categorization. It’s pleasant, certainly, but there’s something underlying it that makes Bucky’s gut clench tight. It’s not bad, at least not yet, but he doesn’t know what to make of it. He finds he can’t look away, though, spellbound by Steve’s piercing eyes.

“Lose the towel,” Steve says once Bucky has finished the apple. “Come here.”

The apple core drops to the floor, and the towel soon follows.

Bucky climbs into bed, climbs on Steve, right into a kiss. Their mouths taste of apples until they kiss long enough that they taste of just themselves, flesh and heat. Bucky sucks lazily on Steve’s tongue and sighs when fingers scratch at his scalp.

They grip hard suddenly, pulling Bucky back a little. The sting tears a groan out of Bucky, one that falls hot on Steve’s jaw. Steve grins up at him, pleased and amused. He tilts his head and gives Bucky a conciliatory peck on the lips before settling back into his pillow, pushing Bucky down his body as he does.

Steve’s not as pushy as he usually is, guiding more than demanding, and Bucky gets to take his time a little, kissing down Steve’s neck. He sucks hard over Steve’s pulse, relishing Steve’s answering hiss and tightening fingers. Steve arches his neck, baring more of his throat for Bucky’s mouth. It’s not an invitation he’s going to turn down. Steve breaths turn into pants, louder with each successive bruise Bucky’s teeth give him.

He pulls back after a while to survey his handiwork. The pinks and reds of the hickeys stand in stark contrast to Steve’s pale skin. They won’t last; Steve’s skin will swallow the marks even faster than Bucky’s, but it’s good to see them anyway, pleasure curling possessively inside Bucky.

Steve huffs a sound that might be a laugh and gently pushes Bucky further down.

He moans when Bucky’s tongue finds his nipple. Steve’s nowhere as loud in bed as Bucky, but when he is, when he lets go of all that damnable control and lets his pleasure show, it gets Bucky hot like nothing else. His cock is already swelling between his legs, just from the taste of Steve’s pebbled nipple and the sounds he’s making.

Steve keeps Bucky there with mouth on his chest, and Bucky’s only too happy to stay, alternating between Steve’s nipples, tonguing one while his fingers play with the other. Steve’s pecs have driven him crazy from the moment the serum gave him honest-to-god tits, and he doesn’t even the remember the number of times he went to sleep in the war with his face in Steve’s pecs and Steve’s dick nestled between his thighs, a little like he was using Bucky to keep himself warm. He always woke up with Steve dressed and a respectable distance away from him, but none of the Commandos were fooled, really.

He still gets to sleep like that sometimes, and he doesn’t know if it’s because Steve remembers or if Bucky is just that obvious about what he wants.

Steve’s grip on his hair tightens. He gives Bucky’s head a little shake, and Bucky pries his face off its comfortable cradle between Steve’s pecs and blinks up at him. Whatever expression is on his face makes Steve’s eyes darken.

“Thought you fell asleep there,” Steve tells him, voice all soft and silky. Dangerous. “Am I boring you, Buck?”

“Nah,” Bucky breathes, surprised at how hoarse his voice is from just this. “S’comfy. Not my fault.”

It’s rare that Steve’s laughs don’t have a cruel edge or a bitter tinge. Bucky hoards them like treasure, imprinting the moments into his mind forever. Steve’s cheeks are flushed a faint pink when he stops, and the look he gives Bucky, it’s…Bucky doesn’t know what to call it, but it makes his heart hurt, not unpleasantly.

“Alright,” Steve says fondly. “Can’t have that. I’ll give you something that’ll occupy you, how about that?”

He’s not subtle, the canny bastard, leading Bucky further down with every word. Bucky tries to kiss and suck at Steve’s ridiculously cut abdomen as he’s led south, but he doesn’t manage more than fleeting tastes of sweat-slick muscle. It lingers on his tongue, a heady aftertaste that’s soon washed away by the solid heat of Steve’s cock.

Bucky groans as his mouth is filled. Steve doesn’t just shove him down, but the slow, steady slide of his cock into Bucky’s mouth is no less inexorable. Bucky breathes through his nose and opens up for it, working his tongue along the underside as Steve goes in deeper. He stops about halfway, and it’s not like him to let cut Bucky any slack. When he looks up, he’s not surprised to find Steve watching him. He’s never made a secret that he gets a kick out of having Bucky like this, lips stretched wide around his cock and maybe struggling to breathe around it.

The eye contact lasts a few intense moments, and then Steve’s pulling him up, faster than he pushed Bucky down. The cockhead pops out of Bucky’s mouth, a string of saliva connecting his lips to the wet, red tip. He licks his lips and watches the string break. Steve tugs at his hair.

Bucky’s the one who strains for it, this time, leaning down with his mouth open and tongue out. Steve lets him, fingers combing idly through Bucky’s hair and tugging now and then, a pleasant sting that gets Bucky sucking wet and messy around the head of Steve’s dick. Precum slicks his tongue, and he swallows it down, savoring the familiar taste. He lingers on the head, licking over the slit and playing with the foreskin, taking his time in a way he rarely gets to. Steve’s easy moods don’t come along often, but when they do, Bucky likes to take advantage.

Steve does run out of patience, just later rather than sooner.

Bucky grunts at the sudden, unrelenting pressure at the back of his head. He gives in without resistance, lets Steve shove his cock into his mouth, down his throat. Bucky doesn’t quite manage it all the way in this angle, but that’s not saying much with Steve. He’s big enough, long and fucking _thick_ , to put Bucky’s finely honed cocksucking skills to the test no matter what the angle.

He gags a little, throat convulsing around Steve’s length. A pleased groan drifts down to him, and Steve’s hips jerk up, pushing his cock deeper into Bucky. There’s no stopping the tears that fill his eyes and wet his cheeks, and that’s a familiar combination too, burning eyes and a too-full throat.

Steve sets a harsh rhythm, holding Bucky in place by his hair as he fucks his mouth. His grip isn’t that tight, Bucky could tear away if he wants, but he stays where he’s put and sucks Steve as best as he can. It’s messy; he slobbers all over it, tongue and lips working clumsily. Saliva drips down his chin, mixed with precum. Steve gets wet easy, and there’s always so much of it, and Bucky tries to lap it up in those sweet seconds before Steve thrusts into his throat.

Steve stops with just the head inside Bucky’s mouth and barely gives him time to process the change before he shoves Bucky down instead, moving him and using his mouth. Bucky wants to go limp, exist in just the tight grasp of Steve’s fingers and the plundering heat of his cock, but in this position, he’s got to hold himself up, keep his body in check so Steve can have his face.

It's still good, so good. The hand Steve hasn’t buried in his hair touches his cheek. Steve angles his thrust to make it bulge, fingers tapping at it, feeling his own cock through the thin, wet barrier of Bucky’s flesh.

There’s something about that, something Bucky can’t name. It sets his face on fire, makes his eyes fall shut.

Steve’s almost lazy as he keeps fucking, the urgency of earlier turning softer, sweeter.

Bucky doesn’t know when he stops, or why. Opens his eyes and peers hazily at the expanse of skin before him. Steve’s got it down as deep as it can go, but if Bucky wants, he can wrap a few fingers around the length left out. He doesn’t, because he’s not sure he can pry his hands off the death grips they have in the sheets and Steve’s thigh, but he thinks about it, wants it.

“Down your throat,” Steve says, voice low and gravelly, “or on your face?”

Bucky takes a few seconds to register the words. He moans when he does, and the sound makes Steve twitch on his tongue.

“Face,” Steve decides summarily. Bucky tries to whine, approval and need all in one, but it comes out mangled around the cock filling his throat. Steve curses, a single hoarse word and Bucky’s name, and then he’s pulling out and fisting his dick and holding Bucky right there, poised for—

It hits his jaw first, and Bucky opens his mouth, puts his tongue out, panting like a bitch in heat. Steve gives it to him, warm stripes of it splattering over his tongue, his lips, over his cheeks. One stray drop falls on his forehead, and Bucky whines high in his throat, swallowing what he can, shuddering at the sharp taste.

He rests his head on Steve’s hip when it’s over, smearing some of the mess on the skin there. Steve’s hand lies limp on his head, and Bucky can hear him gulp in air, slowly calming in the aftermath of his climax. They lie like that for a while, and it’s nice, peaceful even with Bucky’s cock throbbing needily for a touch.

Steve is the first to recover even though he’s the one who came. He taps Bucky’s shoulder, a silent signal that makes him raise his head. Steve’s looking down with heavy-lidded eyes that widen appreciatively at the sight of Bucky’s come-stained face. He licks his lips, making a little show of it even though he’s already tongued them clean. It has the intended effect—Steve’s expression turning predatory.

“Up,” he orders.

Bucky scrambles to obey. Steve’s hand migrates from his hair to his hip, the other one reaching behind Steve’s head. It emerges clutching a nearly empty tube of lube, which then promptly smacks Bucky in the chest.

“I want to watch,” Steve says simply, unbothered by his cock lying soft against his belly. They both know it doesn’t matter, that it’ll surge back to life at the slightest touch or even without it. Steve likes, sometimes, to come in Bucky’s mouth and then just stay there, unmoving and idle, not even trying to get hard again. He does, inevitably, as Bucky drools around the soft, warm length and goes quietly out of his mind with need.

Bucky’s not doing himself any favors, thinking these things. His cock aches, and he needs to touch it, but he doesn’t. Wets his fingers instead and isn’t gentle when he shoves two into himself.

He whimpers at the slick slide and burning friction. Steve’s hand tightens on his hips. The look on his face is dark and hungry, like he’d just eat Bucky up if he could, piece by piece.

Isn’t he, anyway?

“Another,” Steve demands, watching Bucky bite his lips and pant around the two he’s already got inside.

“Too soon,” he protests, though he’s pulling them out anyway to add more lube.

“You can take it,” Steve says, the ghost of a smirk curling his lips. “You need it. Ain’t enough, is it? Won’t be enough until I’m in you.”

Bucky’s too flushed from the pleasure for his embarrassed blush to show, but Steve doesn’t need to see red on his skin to know. His smirk is realized then, sleek like a knife between the ribs.

“Come on,” Steve murmurs as Bucky reaches behind himself with three fingers wet and ready. “Give me a show.”

Bucky burns brighter and does. It’s not even a show he’s putting on for the hell of it. He just doesn’t hold back, letting his mouth fall open on a torrent of weak little sounds and squirming atop Steve’s body as he works his fingers in deeper and spreads them wider. He doesn’t touch his cock, and that makes him whine too, the sight of it bobbing gently with every twitch of his body pulling out wordless pleas that Steve just ignores.

“Enough of that,” Steve says once he’s had his fill. “Ride me.”

Bucky bites down hard on hips lips when he pulls his fingers out. His hole clenches around the sudden emptiness, hollow and aching. He makes quick work of slicking Steve’s cock. Steve’s no help, one arm folded behind his head and the other clutching Bucky’s hip as he lies there watching, leisurely running his eyes over Bucky’s panting mouth and sweaty body.

But even he can’t hold in his reaction when Bucky mounts his cock and sinks down in a single, smooth motion.

Fingers press bruises into his hips, right under the curve of bone. It’s a grounding pain that sees him through the sudden, searing fullness of Steve’s cock. He shifts experimentally and cries out when even that slight motion makes his insides flare with sensation. It hurts, and it feels so good, pained pleasure and pleasing pain. He can’t bring himself to start riding, not when he wants to just sit like this for a while, basking in being so thoroughly filled.

Steve’s got dark eyes and red cheeks, his pleasure painting his skin. It’s a pretty sight, and Bucky thinks he could stay like this forever, watching Steve light up with pleasure while speared on his cock.

And of course, Steve has other ideas.

His fingers smooth over the marks they sunk into Bucky’s skin. It’s an admiring touch, not a soothing one, and Bucky watches dazedly as that hand travels to the name etched onto his belly as livid scars. These were made the day before yesterday and still look fresh. They’re taking longer to heal, now, as if Bucky’s body has started to accept that they’re meant to be a part of him. He doesn’t know how to feel about that, but those fingers tracing each letter with gentle reverence makes him clench hard around Steve’s cock.

“Mine,” Steve says, like he thinks Bucky still needs the reminder.

“Yes,” he mumbles, tongue thick in his mouth. “Yours.”

Steve flattens his palm over the whole name. His palm is hot. The heat sinks into Bucky’s skin and goes deeper down into places he can’t name. He closes his eyes to savor the sensation and doesn’t see the hit coming.

Fingers catch the head of his cock, a rough flick more than a proper blow. Bucky doesn’t react beyond a shocked cry before the next one, this one isn’t soft or teasing. Steve’s palm slaps against the length of his cock, and Bucky’s whole body jolts as if he got struck by lightning.

And he moves, bouncing on Steve’s dick, an instinctive drive to get away that doesn’t get him far.

Steve grins his shark’s grin and does it again, and it’s _perverse_ , how it gets Bucky’s cock drooling so desperately.

“Pain slut,” Steve says, approval glinting in his eyes. “Think you can come like this?”

Bucky shakes his head vehemently, words utterly beyond him. Steve tsks, feigning a disappointment that doesn’t show on his face.

“Liar,” he says softly.

Then he—

It’s almost like a cat playing with a squeaky toy, except Bucky’s dick is the toy in the metaphor and it doesn’t squeak, just fucking drools all over itself like it’s begging for Steve to slap it silly. Bucky’s the one who makes the noises, whines and whimpers and throaty little cries that get him no mercy, only more of flicking fingers and scraping nails and flat hits with Steve’s palm.

And he moves through every moment of it, squirming on Steve’s cock because he just can’t help it. It’s a flood of conflicting sensation, and he drowns it, trembling on Steve as the coil in his gut winds tighter and tighter.

A blunt nail digs sharply into the angry, red head of his dick and tears his orgasm out of him. Bucky sobs through every scorching pulse of it, cock aching as it twitches in Steve’s loose grip and spurts its release.

Steve waits until it’s soft and wet and limp and then strokes it, once, twice, until Bucky’s gasping through choking tears.

“S-stop,” he sobs, clutching his own thighs so he won’t try and pry Steve away. “Too much, Steve, stop.”

Steve does, miraculously, letting go of Bucky’s cock with one last stroke. He shudders at the sudden relief, and Steve chooses that moment to buck his hips, bouncing Bucky on his dick.

“Move, Bucky.”

Bucky wipes his face in the crook of his right arm and does as told, bracing his hands on Steve’s chest as he works up a rhythm. He’s too sensitive from his orgasm, but there’s a certain twisted pleasure to be had in the piercing sparks of overstimulation. His prostate flares in protest at each errant brush of Steve’s cock, and it doesn’t matter how Bucky changes the angle, Steve’s too damn huge to spare that spot. All he can do is take it, stomach clenching and chest heaving as too-sharp pleasure assaults his body.

Steve comes, sooner than Bucky expected. Heat fills him and drips right out, but Steve stays, softening cock buried inside Bucky. He stills Bucky with hands on both sides of his hip but starts moving instead, grinding his cock into his wet hole with bared teeth and soft grunts.

Bucky just lets it happen, breathing picking up as Steve grows hard inside him.

There’s an intimacy to this that gets to him, makes him warm and soft. His cock remains limp, worked over and still sore, but the rest of him is quick to adjust to the growing fullness in his ass.

He doesn’t wait for Steve to tell him. He moves, thighs burning as he drags his body’s up Steve’s cock and slams down. Come slides out of him with each thrust, some of it pushed right back inside by Steve’s cock. It’s messy, filthy, and Bucky feels like an animal, a slave to sensation, and it’s scary, how much he likes it.

The crazed euphoria of it gets him through another of Steve’s orgasms, but he still doesn’t pull out, just keep his cock nestled inside Bucky until he starts filling out once more.

“A-again?” Bucky asks, barely recognizing the feeble wreck his voice has become.

“Again,” Steve says, and he sounds no better but infinitely hungrier. “And again and again, sweetheart.”

Bucky bites his lip, shuddering violently.

Steve slaps his ass, makes him move, and Bucky does, riding him fast and frantic even as his ass burns, fucked raw and wet with come. _Dripping_ with it, thighs slick with sweat and stickier fluids. Some of it has dried, pulling uncomfortably at skin when he moves, and still, Steve shows no sign of stopping. It says something that it took him three orgasms to take the edge off, but that’s not very reassuring for Bucky’s burning legs and ass.

He tires soon enough, losing his earlier frenzy and settling into short, jerky bouncing. Steve’s been largely passive under him, if that word can describe a man so utterly confident in his capacity to get Bucky to dance to his tune without so much as twitching a finger. But he’s been content to let Bucky do the work, guiding him with a hand on his hip or around his dick, and Bucky half-expects that to change, for Steve to yank him down and just fuck up into him. But Steve just shifts a little, fingers skimming up Bucky’s aching thighs to curl around his waist. The grip is slippery with the sweat on Bucky’s skin, but there’s something viscerally appealing about Steve’s palms slipping and sliding on his skin but never letting go.

Bucky doesn’t stop all at once, doesn’t really mean to stop at all. But he’s so tired, and even the arousal simmering gently in his belly and half-hard cock can’t propel him into moving with the fast-paced frenzy of before. Soon enough, he’s just seated on Steve’s cock and grinding his hips in lazy circles, panting through that feeling of fullness that never gets any less intense.

He catches the exact moment Steve’s lazy, sated grin turns sharp and taunting.

“Aw,” he croons, fingers suddenly digging into Bucky’s flesh. “You tired, Bucky?”

 _Bastard_ is what Bucky really wants to say, but he knows the exact temperature of the hot water that’ll land him in.

“Ain’t a machine,” he grunts instead. “Ain’t you.”

That earns him a harsh flick on one perky nipple. Bucky hisses through his teeth and can’t stop squirming when Steve’s thumb and forefinger clamp over the little nub, twisting and tugging roughly. Steve’s content playing with Bucky’s chest for a little while, rubbing and pulling the nipples and cupping his palms over bulging pectorals to give them a hard, rough squeeze.

It’s a piercing blend of sensations, Steve’s cock pushing at his insides with each restless shift of Bucky’s body and his chest radiating sharp-edged heat.

Steve’s still holding him by the tits when his thrusts his hips upward, jolting Bucky violently. He yelps and pitches forward, but is held upright by Steve’s hands braced on his chest.

“Keep moving,” Steve says, smiling not very pleasantly. “You want to make me come, don’t you?”

“I’m tired,” Bucky whines, even as he’s tensing his legs for another back-breaking round. “Just—fuck, just come already.”

Steve grunts when Bucky starts moving. He doesn’t let go of his chest, groping idly along his torso, grip tightening whenever Bucky manages a particularly hard thrust.

“Where?”

It takes Bucky a second to even hear the question through his own heartbeat roaring in his ears, another to give up trying to guess the meaning.

“What?”

“Where do you want me to come?”

“I—hell, I’d say you have an idea.”

Steve sinks his fingers into Bucky’s sides, scoring lines of fire down the skin. It’s just another sting to join the mess of sensations that Bucky’s body has turned into, but that doesn’t stop him from throwing his head back with a shuddering cry.

“You’re going to say it anyway,” Steve says, voice hoarse but steady.

And then he’s grabbing hold of Bucky’s hips and _moving_ him, twisting his entire body into following Steve’s will. It works him over something fierce, sets his muscles aflame.

“ _In me_ ,” Bucky gasps, trying not to shake into pieces. “Come inside, come in me, come on, you can—I want it, you know I—Steve!”

Steve says nothing, but he must have got what he wanted. He doesn’t let go of Bucky, doesn’t stop using him as a glorified fleshlight, but there’s newfound urgency to his movements, sure signs of him chasing his climax.

Bucky closes his eyes and gives in, letting himself be used and abused.

The sheer heat of it’s startling every time, and Bucky whimpers through the fresh wave of it before finally letting himself slump on Steve. His cock slips out of Bucky and come gushes out, and he doesn’t have the energy to do more than whine wretchedly at it.

“Ssh,” Steve mumbles, throwing a heavy arm over Bucky’s back. He rolls them around, and Bucky’s whole body flares as aching, overused muscles scream their protest. “There you go, ssh. You did so good.”

He pants into Steve’s neck, the sounds turning high and broken when a hand wraps around his cock.

“I think you deserve a reward, don’t you?” Steve asks.

Bucky’s only answer is a trembling stream of cries as he jerks helplessly into the circle of Steve’s fist.

-

It fades away then, Bucky’s writhing body and Steve’s dark-eyed expression dissolving into black.

Bucky’s the one who hits pause this time.

In the solid, damning present, Steve’s chest is moving against Bucky’s back with deep, measured breaths that are telling on their own. His hand’s still idle over Bucky’s clothed dick, but the fingers twitch now and then, sending little fissures of sensation through Bucky’s body.

“Security again?” he asks quietly.

Steve nuzzles his neck and doesn’t say a word.

“This is fucked up,” Bucky tells him.

“Hm? But you don’t even know what I’m doing yet.”

Bucky laughs. His heart’s pounding in his chest. His cock’s so hard it hurts.

“I have a damn good idea.”

Steve slides his hand inside Bucky’s pants, and the warm, bare skin on his cock makes him bite down hard on his lip. He has to lock his muscles not to arch into the touch. The laptop is still perched precariously on his lap, and it’s as good an excuse as any to not give in.

Steve’s thumb slides against the head, rubbing at the wet tip.

“It’s not over yet,” he says, amusement clear in his voice. “Play the rest.”

Bucky does.

The black lingers another second, but is then replaced by Steve’s face. What’s visible of the background is bland and unidentifiable. A beige wall and a white ceiling. There are no windows, no furniture.

“Thank you,” says the Steve on the screen. “For putting him in my path. I’m grateful, really. But if you keep coming after us, I’ll kill you and make him watch.”

Steve’s face splits into a chilling grin. It’s just a small, lopsided curve of lips; the horror of it is in the eyes.

“Or maybe he’ll do it himself. You can always try to find out. But I wouldn’t advise it.”

The screen turns dark again, for good this time.

Bucky numbly watches Steve close the video player.

And then it’s not just a hand on his cock but another on his chest, feeling him up through his sweater before slipping under it to grope bare skin. Bucky has the fleeting thought that he should resist, probably. Push Steve away and demand answers. An explanation. A reason.

But he can guess. No, he knows, with unsettling surety, exactly why Steve did this and what he plans to do with it.

“Don’t keep doing this.”

Even as he says it, Bucky doesn’t know what he means. He’s talking about the video but there’s more.

The laptop topples to the floor when Steve flips them over violently. Neither of them spares it a glance. Bucky’s only concerned with the man looming above him, pinning him.

Steve leans down until his forehead is pressed to Bucky’s. His eyes are so big like this, bright and blue.

“You can stop me,” Steve tells him. He’s not smiling, no smirk or grin. Just calm blue eyes, an expression that’s almost serene. “Put me in your crosshairs. Put a bullet in my brain.”

Bucky makes an inhuman noise.

“No,” he says, voice catching in his throat. “Don’t ask me—no, please. I can’t. I don’t want to.”

“I’m not asking.” Steve kisses him, a light brush of lips. “It’s an option. It’s there. The damsel can free himself. Slay the monster with his own hands. Isn’t that a good story?”

“I can’t,” Bucky sobs, clutching at Steve with both hands, digging nails in until they break skin. “I can’t, Steve.”

“Ssh, it’s okay.” Steve kisses him again, deeper this time. His body settles over Bucky’s, a sweet, suffocating heat. “I’ve got you. I’ll take care of you.”

It’s another kind of heat then, Steve’s body moving over his, his mouth firm on Bucky’s, his fingers and tongue curling around the delicate parts of Bucky like a wordless, absolute promise.

**Author's Note:**

> Let me know what you think!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [collab: voxofthevoid](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23361448) by [kocuria-visuals (kocuria)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kocuria/pseuds/kocuria-visuals)




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